Using Mimic in Carrara Pro
laststand@runbox.com
Posts: 866
New user here.
I loaded an M4 cr2 file in Carrara. I opened Mimic in the Properties Tray. I selected the M4 dmc file, and a wave file. I played the animation. It worked, after a fashion.
The main problem is, his teeth didn't move. He spoke through clenched teeth. There were no Animate Teeth and Tongue options. :-) What can I do about this?
Is M4 a poor choice of figures? Is there another that performs better than this?
I see the dmc list is missing V4, as well as the new Genesis figure. Is there perhaps another source of dmc files?
I look forward to your reply. Thanks.
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Comments
M4 is an excellent choice for mimic. Something is borked with your M4. Here's some ways to help troubleshoot off the top of my head:
Load in a fresh M4, straight from the Content tab - runtime folder, or the Studio Library into a fresh, new scene and try again, without making any changes to anything. The more pure the scene, the better the experiment.
Also, did you read the pdf that came with the Carrara version of mimic? It is conveniently located in the Help folder of Carrara, so you can actually open it from the Help menu item in Carrara: "Mimic Pro"
That said, if you read the Mimic Pro manual, and try a fresh M4 file and it still isn't right, there's yet another idea you might try. You might not have an updated M4 CR2, or there may just be something wrong with the one you have in the library. If you have the "Update M4" utility shortcut that came with it, try running that.
There was an issue found a while ago about certain morphs not 'keeping' correctly through saves, or some such. The cure was a remarkable discovery that still overwhelms me that Rogue Pilot went through all the effort to figure it out:
Open M4 in DAZ Studio and when the Power Loader launches (you must have installed the Power loader files) select everything from the list and let it run its course. I didn't even see anyone mention anything about saving this version of the model. Just that you give the power loader the opportunity to run it's course on all morphs you have for it, and that fixes the issues that were discovered. The issues were reported for V4 with A4 morphs. But I was having the issue with other morphs too... that is until I ran the power loader through. I actually saved my powered up versions. They're the base figure with all morphs that you own (made by DAZ, supported by power loader) INJected into it.
I recall running into this issue once or twice. I believe that, each time, I had to make the character over again on a fresh base figure. Here are some tips to help:
To Save any shaping morph settings within Carrara
With the figure selected (whose shapes you wish to store, so you can apply them to a new figure), go to the NLA tab on the right of the screen and click "Create Master Pose".
In the dialog that opens, be sure that Body Morphs is selected (bottom of the list). You can have the rest selected too, but Body Morphs will store the shape morphs. Note that I think there may be more that must be selected with V4, basically, look through and make sure that anything with the word "morph" in it is selected.
Give it a name and click "OK".
To Save the Texture Settings
Select "model" on the figure that contains the optimized shaders and go to the Texture Room
Find or create a good spot in your Shaders Browser tab to save the file
Drag the multi-colored ball from the top right of the texture room to the browser
Give it a name.
Now load in the new M4
With the new figure selected go to the NLA tab and select "Load data from Clip"
If the proper morphs were injected already, the shape will take place - otherwise, INJ them now.
With the model selected, go to the texture room and drag the shader you've saved above into the multi-colored ball on the top right.
It wouldn't surprise me if this figure was corrupted in some way. I've smacked him around quite a bit. If I need to rebuild him, I will. I'll get to the bottom of this tomorrow.
Thanks.
have you run the DzCreateExPFiles-M4 in My Library\Runtime\Libraries\!DAZ or loaded him into Daz studio with all morphs using powerloader?
Nope. DAZ is very new to me. I have much to learn. I will try these things. Thanks.
...................................
Next Day
wendy♥catz,
I ran the batch file DzCreateExPFiles-M4. It created some morphs in the Michael 4 dir beneath it. The Michael 4 cr2 was not modified by running this file. Then I read,
Since I'm trying to go straight from Poser to Carrara, without going via DS, I'm not clear on how ExP impacts me. I'm not even sure what it is. What am I missing?Dartanbeck,
A clean copy of the M4 cr2 worked fine. Now I have some work to do.
If I recreated this character in DS, using the new Genesis figure, where would I find a dmc file for it?
Thanks.
is a quirk of Carrara with M4 and V4, you need to run that script once or load the figure in Daz studio once using powerloader to create a path for the morphs
don't ask me why, you just do!
Poser does not need it.
OK, I get it. You saved me future angst. Thanks.
..................................................
Later
Well, I just found this:
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/10754/P120/#156297
These application notes from ps1borg are valuable indeed. It's the best information I've seen on Mimic so far. I think I'll be able to work with this. I learned more from just looking at his screen shots than from the little doc that comes with Mimic Pro, or from the Mimic page in the DAZ store. I don't know where all those panels came from, but I will find out. :-)
wendy♥catz, I think you said something about not being free to give your home-made dmc files to others. I'm no lawyer, but I think the DMCA still allows us to give away our own work. I wish an actual lawyer would speak to this, just for drill. Copyright law is a morass. The absence of readily available dmc files is what I would call ten cents holding up a dollar. For those who don't know, Poser has the same problem. The difference is, I am happy to see, Mimic is a more capable tool than Poser's Talk Designer or the TDA2 script. I've tried them both.
At code, I'm a rank amateur. When I find myself looking at a script editor, I know I'm about to go down a rabbit hole. Looks like I'll be saved from that.
I made and gave away a free dmc for Genesis 2 female,, it is on sharecg
I do indeed know how to make them now
but can only share ones I made from the default one
the Genesis one was made by Daz and you should have it already in C:\Program Files (x86)\DAZ 3D\DAZStudio4\plugins\dzmimic\Configuration_Files
not in 64bit can install both
Thanks for making me look! I have Genesis.dmc after all!
Guess I'll experiment with Genesis now.
Just wait, Rottenham. You're gonna end up loving the tar out of Carrara. It just keeps expanding. The more you learn, the more you find that you have yet to learn ;)
I came into Carrara with a few beta versions prior to the official release of 8.0, as I liked the 64 bit Pro beta better than 7, which I upgraded to from the Characters and Avatars book's copy of C6 Pro - during a promotion that then made 8.0 Pro free for buying 7 Pro. Before I finally bought Carrara, I knew already that I was going to love it. I studied its promo pages (much more awesome promos back then, IMHO) and read into the manual that I printed out fairly regularly. Getting more and more excited about it.
Well, getting it onto my computer was another issue altogether. I loaded in the Millennium Environment (my main background making instrument of those times) in the full 360 degree circumference. Oh my did it look tiny in Carrara. Not like Poser, where it envelops the entire scene and beyond! LOL
Anyways... I learned how to optimize the Mil Environment and get my scenes together. Cameras in place, it was back to being the expansive surrounding terrain I was accustomed to. Then I bought the Elfin Sky Ship by Winnston 1984 at Rendo, which came with this amazing spherical background environment. Removing its ability to cast or receive shadows, and placing its texture map into the glow channel at a brightness of about 30 optimized it just like the Mil Environment, except that, after expanding it a bit, it was much larger - taking more advantage of Carrara's immense real estate.
Wendy uses the spherical camera in Carrara to take spherical images to apply to spheres to make her own globes of this type - and she does this a lot. It's a cool built in feature of Carrara. You really don't need to use a sphere mesh at all - because Carrara can read it's own (and others) spherical maps in the Backgrounds portion of Scene properties. I know... I'm going on....
Moral: I make beautiful landscapes now directly in Carrara that render really quite fast - especially considering how vast they are - complete with an atmosphere that changes the lighting globally compared to where I place the sun light! :) This is just a tiny piece of the excitement I've been forced to deal with as a Carrara user - not even getting into how much I love the powerful texture room, animation capabilities with multitude of automated animation feature throughout this incredibly friendly and efficient interface....
Oh... has anyone warned you that I babble? My wife calls me Sir Babble-on... and on... and on.... :ahhh:
I expect to love it, Dartanbeck. Just as soon as I learn to drive this car, I look forward to taking a long trip.
This inspires me:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wY5lo-Z0ERw
It's not perfect, there are a couple of things I might have done differently, but I really like it. I like that it was possible.
As for scenes, I like those city block models, and all the 50s cars. I will fill my machine with buildings and characters until the file won't even load. I want real people (or somewhat real) walking down the street, driving cars, sitting in bars, laughing at jokes, getting in fights, tripping on cat toys, on and on. I've been a devoted sci fi fan since I was 12, but nothing is weirder, more ludicrous, than real life. I have delusions of grandeur about being syndicated, too, just as I believe others do.
I see my learning phase as school. Just as people do in the first year of school, I've already changed my goals. And just like school, I read, study, practice, talk and listen, without having anything I can show for it. It's still too soon. I try to have patience with myself. I tell myself, I should have taken this up 30 years ago, except that it didn't exist 30 years ago. Better late than never.
Anybody can sit down with a $10K machine, and $10K worth of Autodesk software, and 10 people to help them, and create movie-grade video. The real heros, though, are the ones who can (and will) do it for $2K, alone, at home. IOW, I think this is where the action is.
So babble on, man. I'm gonna animate these buggers if its the last thing I do.
Another cool read are the various Carrara Community Movie Project threads, where Mike Moir took the bull by the horns and started teaching modeling and rigging lessons with plenty of others adding to the goodness of it all. I know I have the tendency to pour out too many links, but you never know. Besides, you may always opt to simply ignore them! ;)
Cheers and happy rendering/discovering!
Dartanbeck
Also, Mike Moir has another thread around here with some excellent videos of him designing walk cycles for the guy model he made for that community project. I could say: "too bad that project never really took off", but as there is no time limit applied, whose to say that it won't. There certainly is a wealth of thoughts on the subject. One last: Speaking of Mike, his DAZ 3D Published Artist name is mmoir, whom has some incredible products in his store, here at DAZ 3D!
So, then.
The paths to my Poser runtime and to its own dmc files never change, but I have to drill down to them over and over. How can I get Mimic to remember them?